Ever watched Boheme backwards?

Ever watched Boheme backwards?

Opera

norman lebrecht

April 08, 2022

Go to Detroit Opera.

It’s in their season. ‘I liked the fact that I had to cry at the beginning and not at the end,’ said one audience member.

How do we go from tragedy to hope? From death to life? From loneliness to love? In this visionary treatment of Puccini’s opus La bohème, Detroit Opera does just that — by presenting the opera in reverse order. From finish to start, from death to the promise of new love, from loneliness and despair to the joy of friendships, wine, and song, this reversal presents the characters and arias we love in a refreshing, new vision of the story. Our favorite starving young artists and lovers survive to hope another day.

Presented in the Detroit Opera House in a co-production with Boston Lyric Opera and Spoleto Festival USA, this bold, unconventional take on Puccini’s opus is itself a bohemian work of art: experimental, nonconforming, original. This production is the first to stage La bohème in reverse, marking an impressive creative milestone for Detroit Opera as part of our vision for The Next 50.

Comments

  • Cantantelirico says:

    Is this what happens when Wagnerians run American regional opera companies?

  • Don Ciccio says:

    So in reverse to what Puccini wanted, correct?

  • Suzanne says:

    I wonder how the tenor feels, having to sing “Che gelida manina” at the end of the evening. . . .

  • Ari Bocian says:

    So Mimi reconciles with Rodolfo and dies before she decides to break up with him in order to look after her emotional and physical well-being?

    Sure, that makes sense. Will we next see Don Jose stab Carmen before he helps her escape from prison? See Madama Butterfly stab herself before she marries Pinkerton? See Don Giovanni go to Hell before he stabs the Commendatore? See Calaf elope with Turandot before he answers the three riddles?

    Is this really the new normal for opera?

  • fflambeau says:

    I recommend standing on your head while watching this.

  • Bostin'Symph says:

    I’ll go see it if, at the end, I can take my ticket to the box office and exchange it for the admission price. 🙂

  • Player says:

    Do they play the music backwards then?

  • John Borstlap says:

    I look forward to other operas in reverse: Wagner’s Ring – finally some joy at the conclusion; Strauss’ Salome with Jochanaan’s head restored; and Tosca mysteriously recovering from her fatal leap. But other works may be more problematic: Isolde getting wound-up about her prospects and angry at a revived Tristan; Golaud and Melisande being lost in the woods (but at least she recovered); and Figaro damned to measure his bedroom in spite of the count’s retrackting.

  • James Weiss says:

    The Emperor’s New Clothes.

  • Brian says:

    LOL. Whatever. I guess the take-away is that you can’t destroy La bohème no matter how hard you try.

  • Sam McElroy says:

    Reminds me of Billy Pilgrim – in Vonnegut’s masterpiece, “Slaughterhouse 5” – watching the war movie backwards to flip the gruesomeness of man’s inhumanity to man on its head. The bomb doors on the planes suck up the fire from the cities below into metal cylinders, which are transported back to the factories, where, touchingly, it is the women who dismantled them. Vonnegut’s point, of course, having witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden himself, was that life is so cruel that only the denial of time itself can negate its inevitable march towards catastrophe of one sort or another. But are we now living in times in which we want to protect ourselves from the poetic pathos of life’s inevitable cycles? Have we become too afraid of death to even dare to face the oxymoronic beauty of loss, as captured by Puccini’s four act chronology? What next? La Traviata is re-written to coincide with the discovery of penicillin?

  • IP says:

    If only George Floyd had seen this. . .

  • caranome says:

    or simply run it as a flashback. Can do that with many operas. No need to present this in all these high falutin art terms that makes things sound so grand/important but utterly meaningless.

  • M McAlpine says:

    Are these people sane?

  • Lorenzino says:

    Puccini would be relieved to know that Yuval Sharon has finally sorted out the mess he left his opera in. What next – Meistersinger backwards, getting the longest Act over first?

  • RW2013 says:

    I always suspected that the Merkins didn’t know the front of an opera from the back.

  • Don Smith says:

    I would have preferred to use my top C earlier in the evening.

  • David says:

    Sknaht, ssap ll’I

  • Peter San Diego says:

    How disappointing that they’re not playing the score backwards. 😉

  • Chris M says:

    I was there for opening night and can say that it was pretty well done. Keep in mind that this was the end of a season arc that had the company return to their opera house after a long absence and a rebranding (Detroit Opera instead of Michigan Opera Theatre). But hopefully new artistic directors Yuval Sharon and Christine Goerke will leave the classics mostly alone going forward.

  • David A. Boxwell says:

    “Emehob Al”: when played backwards you can faintly hear the words “opera is dead.”

  • M.Arnold says:

    Why didn’t Puccini think of this?

  • Flo Amzona says:

    We aren’t on the same level as this visionary! Ha ha!

  • Ms.Melody says:

    I am not sure what is more vomit-inducing, the mangling of my beloved opera or the gushing response of the patrons, falling over themselves with delight that they do not have to feel sad at the end of a musical evening. An after theatre dinner and drink can fix that. Nothing new here. The awful Le Nozze di Figaro from Hannover started with the finale and then went back to the right order if not the right story and spirit of Mozart’s masterpiece. The Detroit opera just took it one step further. Such complicated expression of absurdity.
    And, by the way, there is hope at the end of La Boheme. Mimi dies, but like Alfredo in la Traviata , Rodolfo survives and he will live and love again. Musetta and Marcello will probably get back together. And Alfredo will meet the young woman and love her and tell her about Violetta. These were unions ” till death us do part” even if they were not approved and blessed by the church or society, and life will go on.
    There is absolutely no need for these innovations, it adds nothing and replaces a perfectly logical story, written by a great poet, with a confusing mess. But, thank you ever so much for not replacing the text with rap.

  • Joel Kemelhor says:

    “Anna Karenina” could be improved by just changing a couple of words: Instead of stepping “in front of” that train, she steps “onto” it.

  • Lance B Brady. says:

    Cumsing yonger yower macatower

  • James says:

    So pinching a trick from Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” (and the play from which it was adapted), Pinter’s “Betrayal” etc? Not that I object to the experiment, but it’s not exactly a new idea.

  • Max says:

    It was gimmicky. I was there.

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